Collaboration is experiencing growth and importance in the enterprise. Collaboration is a top priority today for senior executives. Driving forces include: trends in globalization and outsourcing, workforce demand for flexibility, critical need for rapid innovation, co-creating value with vendors and customers, technology and tools enabling a networked world, and behavior and expectations of Gen-Y. 

We undertook a study to understand and assess current practices and future outlook on collaboration.

Key findings. Three main messages emerged from our survey responses.

1. Complex collaboration is already a significant work activity for many people, and will only grow in importance. Most respondents have multiple collaborative projects underway at any given time. The purpose of these collaboration projects spans virtually the entire spectrum of enterprise needs. Collaboration efforts extend well beyond a group/department to include collaboration with other departments, partners, vendors, and customers. Collaboration is viewed as being essential across the board in the future, significantly more than the reality today. Individuals as well as organizations believe that they need to collaborate substantially more than they do currently.
2. Successful collaboration requires mostly the good principles of project management applied to dispersed teams. Getting the old-fashioned basics right is critical. Most important advice from the respondents on effective collaboration is to: i) Define goals, roles, timelines and deliverables clearly, ii) Communicate the process and progress frequently and clearly, and iii) Select team members who bring real knowledge and expertise. Key challenges to effective collaboration include organizational culture and priorities, and collaboration process and tools.
3. Keep it simple on the collaboration tools. Email, audio and web-conferencing, and file sharing are rated the most effective tools for collaboration. Wikis, IM, video conferencing and discussion forums rank low on effectiveness for collaboration. Selection of right tools and proper training are identified as potential areas for improvement.

Assessing the State of Collaboration: Return to Essential report expands on these key themes, illustrated by survey findings and quotes from respondents.  The appendix provides other survey responses.

The subtitle of this report, Return to Essentials, captures these themes.  It helps emphasize that collaboration has become or is becoming an essential for how enterprises get their business done.  At the same time we must all be careful about the latest fads in tools and approaches, because our survey respondents point out the importance of time-tested meeting-management practices and well-travelled communications tools as the best way to make collaboration effective.

As the importance of collaboration continues to grow, challenges remain; the human element in collaboration far outweighs technology and tools. To get this balance right, we believe collaborators must address what we call the Four Ps of Collaboration: Purpose, People, Process and Place.

About the Study

The primary objective of the study was to assess the state of Collaboration among individuals and in organizations. This includes:

• expectations, purpose and level of collaboration,
• use of collaboration tools and their effectiveness, and
• barriers to collaboration.

By collaboration, we mean working jointly with others.

Over 450 respondents participated in the survey conducted by All Collaboration in January and February 2010. Respondents came from all levels within organizations, all functional areas, a wide range of organization sizes, a wide range of industries with some concentration in consulting, and different regions although mostly North Americans. While there are some differences in emphasis, the general findings and conclusions are consistent across most of these groups.